Chuck Wendig Fills Me With Ire

For you sillies who don’t know, Chuck Wendig is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. I was lured in by one of his blog posts that my sister-in-law put up on Facebook. It was about raising small children and it was irreverently hilarious, unlike most parenting blogs, which are sentimental, boring, and preachy. Like a sucker, I subscribed to it, http://terribleminds.com/ramble/blog/. Well. He does write about funny kid stuff; but primarily he dishes out writerly wisdom for the Ambitiously Scribulous. That, that is the salt in the wound, the sriracha in the tear duct, the sand in the bikini bottoms. Let me tell you a bit about myself.

In college, I worked at a coffee shop, didn’t shave anything or wear a bra, and thought that having children contributed to overpopulation and was evil. Since then I have revised my personal philosophy and spawned three ridiculous children who will almost certainly make the world a better place. Well, the middle one might explode it. I caught her frenching an electrical outlet the other day. And before you say anything, there was an outlet cover. She knows how to pull those out. Anyway.

At this juncture in the space-time continuum, I am teaching high school English online whilst mommying said three children. I would not change it for the world; but it is pretty stressful. I work in say, four to ten minute-long intervals, bookended by someone needing something. Crackers, Neosporin, rescue from mortal peril. All day every day. I mean, I’m not going to Shutter Island them or anything; but they drive me legit bonkers.

Like every English teacher worth her or his salt, I secretly think I am a good writer. I would commit messy, badly-planned murder for a year to just WRITE. I wanna be Annie Proulx, Douglas Adams, Chuck Palahniuk, Charlotte Bronte, Kurt Vonnegut. But who doesn’t? I tell myself that all of the little outlines hanging out in the “Writing” folder on my desktop could be fleshed out into some really good stuff. I tell myself I could bang out a short novel in a few months, if I had the chance to just write.  In the meantime, and because I fear failure, I tell no one about the writing. Shhhh. Enter Chuck Wendig.

If you are serious about writing, you’ll make it happen, he says. 

Saying you don’t have enough time is just an excuse, he says.

Get to it and write, he says. 

And that, that is why Chuck Wendig Fills Me With Ire. Since I have subscribed to his devil-blog, his spirit has been wafting about my house on Cupid wings, peppering me with delightfully crass anatomical insults like Dick Tit and Ass Gnome. Actually, I came up with those, but he would totally say them.

But the point is he bothers me because I want to write but I am REALLY QUITE BUSY. I honestly think that I don’t have the physical coordination to cram anything else into my life. Right now, for example, I am gazing at what appears to be an underfed spider monkey demonstrating the Pile Driver on an indifferent pony keg. My eyes focus and I realize that it is just the middle child repeatedly body-slamming the baby. Should probably attend to that.

To silence the Wendig-demon, I have decided to join the league of d-bags who have a blog. I make no commitment to post on a regular basis. I might not ever post again. Who knows?

My three year old pops her curly blonde head up next to my computer.

“Whatcha doin’, Mommeee?”

I minimize the browser with the guilty start of a busted porn connoisseur.

“What? Nothing. Drugs. Mommy’s doing drugs.”

So there you have it.

Bloggity blog.